Nobody is precocious enough to predict how television will play out in the political and social context of 2018. The book business, one reads, will lean toward the personal and deeply intimate, celebrating the self. Television is more likely to embrace the big, broad themes of our times and to stir debate and controversy, being matchless in its connection to the frisson of now. Herewith, five likely contenders for high entertainment and hot-topic acrimony.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX, starts Jan. 17)
Penelope Cruz stars alongside Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez in The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
Rogers
Ryan Murphy follows 2016's stunner The People v. O.J. Simpson with this, a mini-series about the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) in Miami Beach. Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin also star in what is likely to be another Murphy-esque meditation on fame, media and the American obsession with killing. The story will begin with Versace's death and then flip backward to fill in the details, and is inevitably and substantially about the life of – and the manhunt for – Andrew Cunanan, suspected of four murders before the killing of Versace. From what is available in advance, it looks sumptuously unsettling.
Counterpart (Starz, CraveTV in Canada, starts Jan. 21)
J.K Simmons stars as a civil servant working in a mysterious agency in Berlin in Counterpart.
Nicole Wilder/Starz/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Television
Brilliantly original yet within a familiar groove, this hybrid of old-school spy drama (think early John LeCarre) and sci-fi, is fun and flinty. J.K. Simmons (Oscar winner for Whiplash) plays a civil servant working in a mysterious agency in Berlin. He's not even sure what they do. It is revealed to him that a Cold War experiment went wrong and there is a parallel world in which he also exists. Playing two roles, Simmons is fabulously good. On the evidence of an early episode, this is a terrific "what if" drama about the deeply personal and big-picture political.
The Alienist (TNT starts Jan 22, Canadian carrier TBA)
Think Netflix's Mindhunter set in 1890s New York. Cary Fukunaga, who gave True Detective its visual oomph, is in charge here, adapting the popular Caleb Carr novel and, no, it is certainly not about aliens from outer space. Emphatically set in the Gilded Age of 1896, it features prepresidential Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York police commissioner, as he corrals an unusual team – a newspaper illustrator, a criminal psychologist and a police secretary – to hunt a murderer of young boys. Early psychology is at the heart of what is a simultaneously sumptuous and unnerving thriller series.
The Terror (AMC, starts March 26)
Of special interest to a Canadian audience, this one. A thriller, from executive producer Ridley Scott, is anchored in the Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage. "Faced with treacherous conditions, limited resources, dwindling hope and fear of the unknown, the crew is pushed to the brink of extinction. Frozen, isolated and stuck at the end of the earth." Ciaran Hinds (from Game of Thrones) plays Sir John Franklin, Jared Harris (The Crown, Mad Men) is Captain Francis Crozier and Tobias Menzies (Outlander) is Captain James Fitzjames. Do not expect anything truly faithful to history. This is a souped-up Gothic thriller in the frozen north.
Crawford (CBC, streams Feb. 2, airs summer 2018)
Exactly what the CBC is doing with this show is a mystery. But it is from Mike Clattenburg, creator of Trailer Park Boys, so expect an original and possibly mind-bending comedy. CBC will stream it online in February and then air it in the summer months. It is also a co-production with Comedy Central, apparently. "When raccoons invade the world's most high-functioning dysfunctional family's home, they help breathe life and new meaning into the odd behaviours of the family." That's the CBC's official gist. Jill Hennessy plays Cynthia, the mom, "an award-winning cereal executive struggling to deal with the stress of juggling work with the needs of her husband, and her lover." Somebody becomes a raccoon whisperer. It sounds like entirely high humour.